Following the progress in various technological fields, the currently available electronic elements have constantly improved operational performance and thereby generate more heat during the operation thereof. As a result, consumers' demands for functionally enhanced heat dissipation unit also increase. To provide enhanced heat dissipation effect, most of the conventional heat dissipation units include a radiating fin assembly formed of a plurality of stacked radiating fins. Manufacturers make efforts to research and develop radiating fins, and heat dissipation units with high performance have become one of the most important targets in the nowadays industrial fields. The heat dissipation unit is usually mounted on a top of an electronic element to dissipate heat generated by the electronic element during the operation thereof. Generally, the heat dissipation unit is a heat sink or a radiating fin assembly, which cooperates with a cooling fan to remove heat from a heat source or has one or more heat pipes connected thereto for transferring the heat to a distant location for dissipation.
Taking a computer as an example, the central processing unit (CPU) thereof generates the largest part of heat in a computer case. When the heat generated by the CPU accumulates in the computer case and exceeds an allowable upper limit, the computer tends to crash or even burn out to cause serious damage thereof. Moreover, to solve the problem of electromagnetic radiation, all the important parts and components, including the CPU, of a computer are enclosed in a closed computer case. Therefore, it has become an important issue as how to quickly guide the heat generated by the CPU and other electronic components or elements out of the closed computer case.
The currently available heat dissipating devices and thermal modules are formed by assembling a plurality of heat dissipating elements together. The heat dissipating elements may include heat pipes, heat sinks, heat-dissipating bases, etc. These elements are assembled together mainly by soldering. However, for heat dissipating elements made of an aluminum material, some specific soldering operation is required to inevitably result in high manufacturing cost of the heat dissipating devices.
Some manufacturers also try to assemble different heat dissipating elements together by using fastening elements, such as screws. However, fastening elements like screws can only be used with some types of heat dissipating elements, such as radiating fins and heat-dissipating base. Heat pipes could not be assembled to other heat dissipating elements using screws.
According to the conventional technique, a heat pipe is associated with the heat dissipating base by forming a hole or a channel on the heat dissipating base and extending the heat pipe through the hole or the channel. In this manner, while the heat pipe can be associated with the heat dissipating base without using screws, the heat pipe must still be soldered to the base or tightly fitted in the hole or the channel on the base. By doing this, high material, assembling and manufacturing costs are needed and the heat pipe is easily damaged during the process of soldering or tight fitting to result in low production yield.
In brief, the conventional techniques for assembling different heat dissipating elements together to form a thermal module have the following disadvantages: (1) unable to quickly and firmly hold heat pipes to the heat-dissipating base; (2) requiring high cost for soldering material; (3) having low assembling efficiency to increase time and labor cost; and (4) having low production yield.